Final project: Animation Development part 1

 Today I decided to spend my time on developing the animation itself. I am fully aware that drawing an animation frame by frame is an extremely time-consuming task and my deadline is approaching really soon. 

I opened OpenToonz and created the first scene from my storyboard, with the first two scenes from the board, I wanted to be still, with just a camera zoom. I wanted the first 10 seconds to be strictly informative about the breed-specific legislation enacted in Overland Park, KS. As my information source, I use the ordinance from Overland Park, that can be accessed by clicking here.

Creating the first two scenes was not a difficult task, because it is simply just drawing the picture, there is no movement. 

This is the first image I drew. I decided to make my animation monochromatic, because not only it makes it more serious, but also whenever I will want to make something stand out, I can do that, by simply adding a bright color. 

I really like the cartoony atmosphere I have created, it is not 'cleaned-up' and I am aware it is very rough-looking. When I was thinking more in-depth about how I want it to look like visually, I was right after our face-to-face workshop on using ink pen with watercolors and I thought about the works of Quentin Blake, who is an illustrator of some of my favorite childhood books. I think the rough look can definitely be a good thing and it can add a lot of visual appeal to the work itself. 

This is the second image I have created for this animation. 

It, once again, is a still image and it is created in gray colors only. To both of those images I have added informative text in IMovie, therefore it is not only a storytelling animation, but also has some actual information on it. These two images came out nicely in my opinion. 

The next step I have taken was create a movement. From my storyboard, I knew I wanted to create a short scene of someone filling up a dog's food bowl, because that was my way of referencing "Monsters Inc." by putting the name "Sully" on the bowl. 

Creating the movement of the dog food coming from the food box to the bowl was a very time consuming process. The tool that was very helpful, was the onion skin, that let me see the frame before, so I could create frames that would actually work well with each other. 

For the dog food color, I have decided to use a reddish shade of gray, to the point where it looks a little brown. I think it does not ruin the monochromatic idea for the animation, but it brings attention to the food, which will bring attention to the name - my main point of this scene. 

After I have completed drawing 36 frames of the dog food just falling into the bowl, I wanted to exported it. I knew that I only could export it as images, however the shortest time of displaying a picture in IMovie is 0.1 second, which would make the motion not only slow but also very choppy. With some motions it would be alright, however, with this particular one, I could not let that happen, because that would destroy my idea. I tried looking for a solution and after a lot of experimenting, I decided to record the screen in OpenToonz. It worked fine, because I ended up with a smooth animation. 

After saving that screen recording, I have imported it into IMovie and connected it with the rest of what I have done. 

This is the first 15 seconds of the animation that I have created and I am very proud of myself. I think it looks good so far and I am on the right track. 

After seeing the feedback from my tutor, I could agree that the text was not very visible. I decided to look into that and experiment with it a little bit more. I wanted to make my text more cinematographic, therefore I changed it color to yellow. I also wanted to change where it is placed and apparently it is not an easy task in IMovie. I had to create a slide on a presentation with the text in a font and style I liked. After that I exported that as a PNG file with a transparent background and dropped it onto the IMovie timeline. I decided the text for the first image would be at the bottom of the screen and the text for the second would be at the top. I decided to place the second one at the top, because the bottom of the image is already full and it is important to keep the balance right. 

This is the first 15 seconds after the corrections: